You Don't Need to Appeal to Everyone As Long As You Find Your Niche

When you’re promoting your work, it’s natural for people to wonder how it appeals to them. However, it’s okay if the answer is “it doesn’t.” Your work doesn’t need to appeal to everyone if you can carve out your own niche.

As productivity writer Seth Godin explains, most businesses are built on a customer base that could be described as “almost no one.” Most people in the world—or even just the country you live in—don’t visit your favourite restaurant or read your favourite author’s books. We all know about big name companies and that’s great, but lots of smaller businesses, freelancers, and artists thrive even though most people don’t know their names:

Rare indeed is a market where everyone is active.

We think we’re designing and selling to everyone, but that doesn’t match reality. It makes no sense at all to dumb down your best work to appeal to the longtime bystander, because the bystander isn’t interested. And it certainly makes no sense to try to convert your biggest critics, because they’ve got a lot at stake in their role of being your critic.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can toss out any criticism you ever get because “Well, it’s not for you.” It does mean that if you can find an audience for the work you do, then you don’t need to water down your work. All that matters is that it appeals to the people you’re pitching to, not everyone in the world.